The Nature of Being

by Nina

New Bay Bridge by Melina Meza

As you can probably tell from my post yesterday on non-holding, I'm in a philosophical mood. To be honest, as much as I value the physical benefits I get from my asana practice, I think I value even more the benefits I've gained from studying yoga philosophy. This is why when Baxter and I describe what I might call the pillars of yoga for healthy aging, we always include "cultivating equanimity" along with strength, flexibility, balance, agility, and stress management. And as I was looking for something to write about this morning, I found a quote from B.K.S. Iyengar that perfectly summed up my reason for holding yoga philosophy in such high esteem:

Yoga recognizes that the way our bodies and minds work has changed very little over the millennia. The way we function inside our skin is not susceptible to differ either in time or from place to place. In the functioning of our minds, in our way of relating to each other, there are inherent stresses, like geological fault lines that, left unaddressed, will always cause things to go wrong, whether individually or collectively. The whole thrust of the yogic philosophical and scientific inquiry has therefore been to examine the nature of being, with a view to learning to respond to the stresses of life with so many tremors and troubles. —B.K.S. Iyengar, from Light on Life

How to handle a dog attack

For most people, dog attacks are not very common. But they happen occasionally, and the experience can be traumatic. Incidentally, they are also a good reason why I am not a big fan of barefoot walking or running. Broken glass pieces and nails can be a problem if you are barefoot; so can dog attacks.

The photo below, from Dreamstime.com, shows a charging dog. It reminds me of an incident many years ago where a dog attacked my two oldest sons, who were very young at the time. They were unsuspectingly playing at a park in Southern New Jersey, when I saw a dog running in their direction across the park. Part of what I will say in this post is based on experiences like that.

I should also say that I grew up around dogs. My grandfather had a farm that was managed by my uncle, and dogs were critically important in managing the farm. One problem we had was that domesticated pigs would often become feral, or would mate with wild boars, in some cases leading to a particularly vicious breed of large feral pigs. I was once attacked by one of these feral pigs while hunting. One of the farm dogs came to my rescue and probably saved my life.



If you are like most people, when you go walking outdoors, you do not carry a walking stick or a cane. Maybe you should. But if you don’t, thick-soled sneakers can be used in a reasonably effective defense in a dog attack situation.

Dogs attacks’ main targets: The faces of children

Dogs tend to be loyal friends, but they must be monitored for signs of aggression, and can be particularly dangerous to children. A significant proportion of dog attack victims are children 5 years of age or younger, who more often than not sustain injuries to the face, with secondary target areas being the hands and feet ().

At the time of this writing the web sites Documentingreality.com and Arbtalk.co.uk had some grisly photos of dog attack victims (, ). They show evidence that the face is often targeted, and some possible consequences of real dog attacks.

Artificial selection: Dogs and Moby-Dick

Modern dogs are descendants of wolves who came into contact with humans about 12,000 year ago. (This general date is often cited, but is the subject of intense debate, with DNA studies suggesting much earlier contact.) Wolves are apex predators; this was true also for wolves that lived around the time they first came into contact with humans. They hunt and live in packs, and rely on fairly complex body language, a variety of sounds, and a keen sense of smell to communicate.

Even being apex predators, wolves were no match for humans. Therefore, as humans and groups of wolves co-evolved, dogs emerged. Dogs evolved instincts that made them sociable toward and submissive to humans, particularly those humans who fed them and also asserted authority over them – those become their “owners”.

Humans, in turn, came to rely heavily on dogs for protection and hunting, and probably evolved instincts that are still largely unexplored today. For example, there is strong evidence suggesting that having pet animals, many of which are dogs, is generally health-promoting (, ).

The evolution of sociability and submissiveness traits is an example of what is often referred to as “artificial selection”, where animals and plants evolve traits almost exclusively in response to the selection pressure applied by humans. In the case of dogs, this was later taken to new heights through selective breeding; leading to the emergence of a variety of dog breeds, some for utilitarian purposes and others for pure vanity, each with very distinctive characteristics.

Interestingly, artificial selection applied by humans does not always produce more sociable and submissive animals. The opposite happened around the mid 1800s due to excessive hunting of sperm whales. The least aggressive were easier to kill, so they were overhunted. Over generations, this placed selection pressure in favor of the evolution of aggressiveness toward humans. The attack on the Essex by a large bull sperm whale, which served as inspiration for Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, was one of the first incidents that resulted from this selection pressure (). Whaling increased, and, predictably, attacks started becoming more and more frequent.

When a dog attacks, stand your ground in a non-threatening way

Dogs, like wolves, are territorial animals. Many dog attacks are likely motivated by humans invading what a dog perceives as its territory at a given point in time. I mentioned earlier in this post that a dog once attacked two of my children. They were playing at a park during the winter. Nobody else was there. I saw this large black dog running from a distance in their direction, and I immediately knew that it was trouble. The dog probably saw us as invading its territory.

Having grown up surrounded by dogs, I pretty much knew what to do. I walked toward my children and placed myself between them and the charging dog. I told the children not to move at all, just freeze. The dog came running until it realized that we were not running. It was a “fake charge”, like most are. It stopped close to me, and barked very aggressively, coming closer. I was wearing boots. I raised one of my boots toward the dog’s snout, and when it bit it, I pushed the boot against its snout.

Here is where I think most people would tend to make a key mistake. They would probably try to hurt the dog to scare it off, by, say, kicking the dog as they would kick a soccer ball. The problem is that, because the dog is a lot faster than they are, if they do that they may end up missing the dog entirely and worse - they may end up losing their balance and falling to the ground. This is when dogs can do the most damage, since they would go for the face of the fallen person.

As a side note, often you hear that dogs attack the throat of their human victims, but that is not what the statistics show. Most victims of dog attacks display injuries on the face and extremities. The "myth" that dogs target the throat is probably based on the notion that dogs attack humans because they see them as prey. However, with exception of feral dogs such as Australian dingos, evidence of dogs preying on humans is very rare. I've reviewed many dog attack photos for this post, and could not find one with evidence that the throat was targeted.

So I pushed my boot against the dog’s snout a few times, firmly but not with the goal of hurting the dog, and did not do anything threatening toward the dog otherwise. This calmed the dog down a bit, but it was still acting aggressively and would not go away. Sometimes firm commands to "seat", "stop", "go away" make the dog react submissively. I tried them but they didn't work; instead they probably made the dog more excited. Then I did what probably is the one thing that most land animals instinctively fear from humans …

Sapiens the thrower

I picked up a few pieces of ice from the ground and threw at the dog. One piece of ice hit the dog on the side of its body; a couple of others were glancing blows. As a result the dog became visibly confused and submissive (telltale sign: tail between the legs), and ran away. Here is where another big mistake may happen. People may try to hurt the dog and become too excited when throwing objects at it. In doing so, they may end up not only missing the dog with the flying objects that they are throwing, but they may also excite the dog, and face another attack.

The best approach here is to focus on having whatever you are throwing at the dog land on top of or as close to the dog as possible; explicitly without trying to hurt it, in part because this improves your aim. Having flying objects coming from you toward the dog is enough to trigger the dog’s instinct to get out of the way of “Sapiens the thrower”. Moreover, if you don’t try to hurt you’ll be relatively calm, displaying the type body language that will trigger submissiveness.

I’ve long suspected that throwing has been a key component of Sapiens’ climb to the top of the food chain, to the point that all land animals have an instinctive fear of humans – even large predators, and much bigger animals such as elephants (as long as they are not “in musth”). One short video has been circulating on YouTube for years; it has various hunting scenes where primitive spears are used (). Many find this video cruel. It clearly shows the enormous evolutionary advantage of humans being able to throw pointy things at other animals. If humans happened to live when Tyrannosaurus rex was around, there is no doubt in my mind that the latter would be the prey.

Keep your face away and your hands closed

Typically you’ll avoid a full-blown dog attack by only standing your ground for a while and not acting aggressively toward the dog. After a short standoff period, you’ll just walk away unharmed. Unfortunately this may not happen if you are facing a dog that has been trained to attack. In this case, having a stick or something like it will help a lot. (In circus acts lions are “pushed around” by trainers holding objects like sticks and wooden chairs; sometimes that doesn't end well - .) If you don’t have one it would be useful to be wearing shoes that can withstand several bites. If not, you can use a piece of clothing, such as a bundled jacket, as a shield.

If you have a stick, or something like a stick, you should not try to hit the dog with it. You should place it near the snout, and push the stick against it each time the dog bites. If you do this calmly and firmly, without trying to hurt the dog (remember, the dog is a lot faster than you are), you will probably discourage biting after a while, turning the attack into a standoff.

What if you don’t have anything with which to defend yourself at first, and a dog attacks you? Keep your hands closed into fists, to avoid having fingers bitten off, and do your best to keep the dog away from your face. As desperate as these situations may be, try to be calm and look for objects that you can use to push the dog away, that you can throw at the dog, or that can be used to wrap around your arms. Frequently there will be objects around that can be of use – e.g., sharp stones, glass bottles, pieces of canvas, loose pieces of a fence, a hose, a tree’s branch. If you fall, try to stand up right away. Very likely you'll sustain injuries to your arms, and possibly legs.

Military and law enforcement personnel are often trained on fighting techniques to handle dog attacks barehanded, such as neck cranks, sharp blows to the throat of the animal, and blinding techniques. I am not sure whether these would be really useful to the average person. In any case, this post is not aimed at military and law enforcement personnel who deal with dog attacks on a regular basis.

Eat beef liver

Beef liver is nature’s super-multivitamin. (Beef heart is just as nutritious.) Dogs, like wolves, have an exquisite sense of smell. If you have seen one of the documentaries about the groundbreaking research by Shaun Ellis (a.k.a., “The Wolfman”), you probably know that wild wolves tend to strongly associate consumption of organ meats with very high status in a pack, to the point that they will instinctively act submissively toward humans that consume organ meats. It is quite possible that dogs do that too. So if you eat beef liver, maybe a dog will “think twice” before attacking you.

Offer the dog a cigarette and a beer

Most dogs can become aggressive from time to time, but not dogs that know how to chill. Therefore, you may consider carrying special dog cigarettes and beer around - only some brands work! Okay, a clarification: the "eat beef liver" advice is not a joke, nor are the others above it.



Notes and acknowledgements

The “charging dog” photo is from Dreamstime.com. The “drunken dog” montage was created with photos from the blog Agrestemundica.

Cesar Millan's site has a number of good suggestions on how to handle dog attacks (). However, I personally think that the way he handles dogs (e.g., often with open hands) is dangerous if copied by an inexperienced person. There is a great deal of "hidden" information that is conveyed to dogs by nuances of Cesar's body language. Those nuances are difficult to copy by an inexperienced person.

An interesting source of information on how to handle dog attacks is the web site Fightingarts.com (, ).

Cortisol and Good Health

by Baxter

Fallen Tree by Brad Gibson

We have mentioned one of the body’s important hormones, cortisol, on these pages a few times in the recent past, but always with the slant of it somehow being a problem child, a bad actor, a rotten apple, as it were. But cortisol, when it is working in harmony with a well-balanced body and mind, is part of a elegant system that tries to help us respond in the best way possible to short term stressful situations that are bound to arise in our daily lives. So on a daily basis, during the early morning hours - around 4-5 am, the body releases a bit of cortisol to get your inner furnace ready for the first foot hitting the floor in the morning. It releases a bit of sugar into the blood stream, sends a bit more blood to the brain and heart, and really gets us ready for action, however mellow or intense our morning will be. Then, if the day is relatively uneventful, the level of cortisol gradually diminishes to its lowest levels around 10pm.

When released in response to unexpected stressful events, it has many more helpful roles to play. It has a strong anti-inflammatory effect, which is helpful with acute injury, so it can act like a fire truck when the body’s immune response to infection is too strong by decreasing the life span and production of one of our white blood cells known as lymphocytes. Basically, it tries to keep a balanced approach to infections.

Cortisol has an effect on the cardio-vascular (CV) system by controlling the smooth muscles in the walls of our arteries. In normal circumstances, this allows cortisol to help boost our blood pressure in the short run when we need extra work from the CV system. It has effects on the central nervous system (CNS), too, influencing behavior, mood, excitability, and the electrical activity of neurons. When we put all that together, cortisol is designed to respond to stress by providing fuel in the form of glucose, mobilizing fat and proteins for back-up fuel supply, modifying the immune response, heartbeat, blood pressure, brain alertness and the response of the nervous system to get us through the rough spots.

The cool thing about cortisol is that is has evolved to enhance the body’s response to stress while also protecting from excessive response to stress. The key thing about the place that produces cortisol, the adrenal glands, is that they need time to recover after stressful events have passed. And herein lies the rub!  If we give the body some time to recover between stressful events, the adrenal glands can do their job well, cortisol levels are adequate to the demands of the body, and you stay healthy and ready for the next stressful event.

But if you are either under constant stress, or your mind is prone to brooding about the past or anxious musings about the future or even negative assessments about the present moment, your adrenals interpret this as an actual stressful event occurring right now, and cortisol gets released into your system. So cortisol levels remain high in the blood stream for greater periods of time, which can result in swelling of the gland itself, and an increased chance of the following negative effects: loss of immunity secondary to shrinkage of lymph glands, increased risk of stomach ulcers, increased risk of hypertension, heart disease and other vascular disorders, excess sugar in the blood stream and more chance of developing diabetes. Not a good outlook! 

And as I mentioned last week, chronic stress depletes your supply of cortisol and can steal the building blocks of your sex hormones (see Yoga and Male Menopause), thus negatively impacting your sexual function and your reproductive capacity. What’s a yogi to do? 

Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclined Cobbler's Pose)

The good news is that your regular yoga practice, if it includes those much needed restorative poses (see Restorative Yoga), yoga nidra (see Yoga Nidra and Deep Relaxation), long guided meditations and generous Savasana (see Savasana Variations), should be the perfect balancing act for keeping the adrenals healthy and the cortisol cycle in synch with your changing needs. One fact that might influence your asana and even your exercise regimen is that aerobic or effort-full exercise (and some forms of yoga definitely fit the bill) can cause a release of cortisol to deal with the short term “stress” of the increased physical effort. If you work out or do asana in the morning, when there is still a bit of cortisol around from the 4 am release, the effects of the brief elevation are minimal. However, a late day work out could be theoretically more problematic, with a negative effect on sleep patterns as one possible side effect. So I would recommend active workouts and asana for the morning, and restorative practices in the evening if you want or need to do something later in the day.

So remember, cortisol is a good guy just trying to do its job. It’s the stress and our reactions to it that are really the culprits. Fortunately, we have the technology to neutralize this threat to our healthy aging! 

Sudden cholesterol increase? It may be psychological

There are many published studies with evidence that cholesterol levels are positively associated with heart disease. In multivariate analyses the effects are usually small, but they are still there. On the other hand, there is also plenty of evidence that cholesterol is beneficial in terms of health. Here of course I am referring to the health of humans, not of the many parasites that benefit from disease.

For example, there is evidence () that cholesterol levels are negatively associated with mortality (i.e., higher cholesterol leading to lower mortality), and are positively associated with vitamin D production from skin exposure to sunlight ().

Most of the debris accumulated in atheromas are made up of macrophages, which are specialized cells that “eat” cell debris (ironically) and some pathogens. The drug market is still hot for cholesterol-lowering drugs, often presented in TV and Internet ads as effective tools to prevent formation of atheromas.

But what about macrophages? What about calcium, another big component of atheromas? If drugs were to target macrophages for atheroma prevention, drug users may experience major muscle wasting and problems with adaptive immunity, as macrophages play a key role in muscle repair and antibody formation. If drugs were to target calcium, users may experience osteoporosis.

So cholesterol is the target, because there is a “link” between cholesterol and atheroma formation. There is also a link between the number of house fires in a city and the amount of firefighting activity in the city, but we don’t see mayors announcing initiatives to reduce the number of firefighters in their cities to prevent house fires.

When we talk about variations in cholesterol, we usually mean variations in cholesterol carried by LDL particles. That is because LDL cholesterol seems to be very “sensitive” to a number of factors, including diet and disease, presenting quite a lot of sudden variation in response to changes in those factors.

LDL particles seem to be intimately involved with disease, but do not be so quick to conclude that they cause disease. Something so widespread and with so many functions in the human body could not be primarily an agent of disease that needs to be countered with statins. That makes no sense.

Looking at the totally of evidence linking cholesterol with health, it seems that cholesterol is extremely important for the human body, particularly when it is under attack. So the increases in LDL cholesterol associated with various diseases, notably heart disease, may not be because cholesterol is causing disease, but rather because cholesterol is being used to cope with disease.

LDL particles, and their content (including cholesterol), may be used by the body to cope with conditions that themselves cause heart disease, and end up being blamed in the process. The lipid hypothesis may be a classic case of reverse causation. A case in point is that of cholesterol responses to stress, particularly mental stress.

Grundy and Griffin () studied the effects of academic final examinations on serum cholesterol levels in 2 groups of medical students in the winter and spring semesters (see table below). During control periods, average cholesterol levels in the two groups were approximately 213 and 216 mg/dl. During the final examination periods, average cholesterol levels were 248 and 240 mg/dl. These measures were for winter and spring, respectively.



One could say that even the bigger increase from 213 to 248 is not that impressive in percentage terms, approximately 16 percent. However, HDL cholesterol does not go up significantly response to sustained (e.g., multi-day) stress, it actually goes down, so the increases reported can be safely assumed to be chiefly due to LDL cholesterol. For most people, LDL particles are the main carriers of cholesterol in the human body. Thus, in percentage terms, the increases in LDL cholesterol are about twice those reported for total cholesterol.

A 32-percent increase (16 x 2) in LDL cholesterol would not go unnoticed today. If one’s LDL cholesterol were to be normally 140 mg/dl, it would jump to 185 mg/dl with a 32-percent increase. It looks like the standard deviations were more than 30 in the study. (This is based on the standard errors reported, and assuming that the standard deviation equals the standard error multiplied by the square root of the sample size.) So we can guess that several people might go from 140 to 215 or more (this is LDL cholesterol, in mg/dl) in response to the stress from exams.

And the effects above were observed with young medical students, in response to the stress from exams. What about a middle-aged man or woman trying to cope with chronic mental stress for months or years, due to losing his or her job, while still having to provide for a family? Or someone who has just been promoted, and finds himself or herself overwhelmed with the new responsibilities?

Keep in mind that sustained dieting can be a major stressor for some people, particular when one gets to that point in the dieting process where he or she gets regularly into negative nitrogen balance (muscle loss). So you may have heard from people saying that, after months or years of successful dieting, their cholesterol levels are inexplicably going up. Well, this post provides one of many possible explanations for that.

The finding that cholesterol goes up with stress has been replicated many times. It has been known for a long time, with studies dating back to the 1950s. Wertlake and colleagues () observed an increase in average cholesterol levels from 214 to 238 (in mg/dl); also among medical students, in response to the mental and emotional stress of an examination week. A similar study to the one above.

Those enamored with the idea of standing up the whole day, thinking that this will make them healthy, should know that performing cognitively demanding tasks while standing up is a known stressor. It is often used in research where stress must be induced to create an experimental condition. Muldoon and colleagues () found that people performing a mental task while standing experienced an increase in serum cholesterol of approximately 22 points (in mg/dl).

What we are not adapted for is sitting down for long hours in very comfortable furniture (, ). But our anatomy clearly suggests adaptations for sitting down, particularly when engaging in activities that resemble tool-making, a hallmark of the human species. Among modern hunter-gatherers, tool-making is part of daily life, and typically it is much easier to accomplish sitting down than standing up.

Modern urbanites could be seen as engaging in activities that resemble tool-making when they produce things at work for internal or external customers, whether those things are tangible or intangible.

So, stress is associated with cholesterol levels, and particularly with LDL cholesterol levels. Diehard lipid hypothesis proponents may argue that this is how stress is associated with heart disease: stress increases cholesterol which increases heart disease. Others may argue that one of the reasons why LDL cholesterol levels are sometimes found to be associated with heart disease-related conditions, such as chronic stress, and other health conditions is that the body is using LDL cholesterol to cope with those conditions.

Specifically regarding mental stress, a third argument has been put forth by Patterson and colleagues, who claimed that stress-mediated variations in blood lipid concentrations are a secondary result of decreased plasma volume. The cause, in their interpretation, was unspecified – “vascular fluid shifts”. However, when you look at the numbers reported in their study, you still see a marked increase in LDL cholesterol, even controlling for plasma volume. And this is all in response to “10 minutes of mental arithmetic with harassment” ().

I tend to think that the view that cholesterol increases with stress because cholesterol is used by the body to cope with stress is the closest to the truth. Among other things, stress increases the body’s overall protein demand, and cholesterol is used in the synthesis of many proteins. This includes proteins used for signaling, also known as hormones.

Cholesterol also seems to be a diet marker, tending to go up in high fat diets. This is easier to explain. High fat diets increase the demand for bile production, as bile is used in the digestion of fat. Most of the cholesterol produced by the human body is used to make bile.

Could the low testosterone problem be a mirage?

Low testosterone (a.k.a. “low T”) is caused by worn out glands no longer able to secrete enough T, right? At least this seems to be the most prevalent theory today, a theory that reminds me a lot of the “tired pancreas” theory () of diabetes. I should note that this low T problem, as it is currently presented, is one that affects almost exclusively men, particularly middle-aged men, not women. This is so even though T plays an important role in women’s health.

There are many studies that show associations between T levels and all kinds of diseases in men. But here is a problem with hormones: often several hormones vary together and in a highly correlated fashion. If you rely on statistics to reach conclusions, you must use techniques that allow you to rule out confounders; otherwise you may easily reach wrong conclusions. Examples are multivariate techniques that are sensitive to Simpson’s paradox and nonlinear algorithms; both of which are employed, by the way, by modern software tools such as WarpPLS (). Unfortunately, these are rarely, if ever, used in health-related studies.

Many low T cases may actually be caused by something other than tired T-secretion glands, perhaps a hormone (or set of hormones) that suppress T production; a T “antagonist”. What would be a good candidate? The figure below shows two graphs. It is from a study by Starks and colleagues, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition in 2008 (). The study itself is not directly related to the main point that this post tries to make, but the figure is.



Look at the two graphs carefully. The one on the left is of blood cortisol levels. The one on the right is of blood testosterone levels. Ignore the variation within each graph. Just compare the two graphs and you will see one interesting thing – cortisol and testosterone levels are inversely related. This is a general pattern in connection with stress-induced cortisol elevations, repeating itself over and over again, whether the source of stress is mental (e.g., negative thoughts) or physical (e.g., intense exercise).

And the relationship between cortisol and testosterone is strong. Roughly speaking, an increase in cortisol levels, from about 20 to 40 μg/dl, appears to bring testosterone levels down from about 8 to 5 ηg/ml. A level of 8 ηg/ml (the same as 800 ηg/dl) is what is normally found in young men living in urban environments. A level of 5 ηg/ml is what is normally found in older men living in urban environments.

So, testosterone levels are practically brought down to almost half of what they were before by that variation in cortisol.

Chronic stress can easily bring your cortisol levels up to 40 μg/dl and keep them there. More serious pathological conditions, such as Cushing’s disease, can lead to sustained cortisol levels that are twice as high. There are many other things that can lead to chronically elevated cortisol levels. For instance, sustained calorie restriction raises cortisol levels, with a corresponding reduction in testosterone levels. As the authors of a study () of markers of semistarvation in healthy lean men note, grimly:

“…testosterone (T) approached castrate levels …”

The study highlights a few important phenomena that occur under stress conditions: (a) cortisol levels go up, and testosterone levels go down, in a highly correlated fashion (as mentioned earlier); and (b) it is very difficult to suppress cortisol levels without addressing the source of the stress. Even with testosterone administration, cortisol levels tend to be elevated.

Isn't possible that cortisol levels go up because testosterone levels go down - reverse causality? Possible, but unlikely. Evidence that testosterone administration may reduce cortisol levels, when it is found, tends to be rather weak or inconclusive. A good example is a study by Rubinow and colleagues (). Not only were their findings based on bivariate (or unadjusted) correlations, but also on a chance probability threshold that is twice the level usually employed in statistical analyses; the level usually employed is 5 percent.

Let us now briefly shift our attention to dieting. Dieting is the main source of calorie restriction in modern urban societies; an unnatural one, I should say, because it involves going hungry in the presence of food. Different people have different responses to dieting. Some responses are more extreme, others more mild. One main factor is how much body fat you want to lose (weight loss, as a main target, is a mistake); another is how low you expect body fat to get. Many men dream about six-pack abs, which usually require single-digit body fat percentages.

The type of transformation involving going from obese to lean is not “cost-free”, as your body doesn’t know that you are dieting. The body “sees” starvation, and responds accordingly.

Your body is a little bit like a computer. It does exactly what you “tell” it to do, but often not what you want it to do. In other words, it responds in relatively predictable ways to various diet and lifestyle changes, but not in the way that most of us want. This is what I call compensatory adaptation at work (). Our body often doesn’t respond in the way we expect either, because we don’t actually know how it adapts; this is especially true for long-term adaptations.

What initially feels like a burst of energy soon turns into something a bit more unpleasant. At first the unpleasantness takes the form of psychological phenomena, which were probably the “cheapest” for our bodies to employ in our evolutionary past. Feeling irritated is not as “expensive” a response as feeling physically weak, seriously distracted, nauseated etc. if you live in an environment where you don’t have the option of going to the grocery store to find fuel, and where there are many beings around that can easily kill you.

Soon the responses take the form of more nasty body sensations. Nearly all of those who go from obese to lean will experience some form of nasty response over time. The responses may be amplified by nutrient deficiencies. Obesity would have probably only been rarely, if ever, experienced by our Paleolithic ancestors. They would have never gotten obese in the first place. Going from obese to lean is as much a Neolithic novelty as becoming obese in the first place, although much less common.

And it seems that those who have a tendency toward mental disorders (e.g., generalized anxiety, manic-depression), even if at a subclinical level under non-dieting conditions, are the ones that suffer the most when calorie restriction is sustained over long periods of time. Most reports of serious starvation experiments (e.g., Roy Walford’s Biosphere 2 experiment) suggest the surfacing of mental disorders and even some cases of psychosis.

Emily Deans has a nice post () on starvation and mental health.

But you may ask: What if my low T problem is caused by aging; you just said that older males tend to have lower T? To which I would reply: Isn’t possible that the lower T levels normally associated with aging are in many cases a byproduct of higher stress hormone levels? Take a look at the figure below, from a study of age-related cortisol secretion by Zhao and colleagues ().



As you can see in the figure, cortisol levels tend to go up with age. And, interestingly, the range of variation seems very close to that in the earlier figure in this post, although I may be making a mistake in the conversion from nmol/l to ηg/ml. As cortisol levels go up, T levels should go down in response. There are outliers. Note the male outlier at the middle-bottom part, in his early seventies. He is represented by a filled circle, which refers to a disease-free male.

Dr. Arthur De Vany claims to have high T levels in his 70s. It is possible that he is like that outlier. If you check out De Vany’s writings, you’ll see his emphasis on leading a peaceful, stress-free, life (). If money, status, material things, health issues etc. are very important for you when you are young (most of us, a trend that seems to be increasing), chances are they are going to be a major source of stress as you age.

Think about individual property accumulation, as it is practiced in modern urban environments, and how unnatural and potentially stressful it is. Many people subconsciously view their property (e.g., a nice car, a bunch of shares in a publicly-traded company) as their extended phenotype. If that property is damaged or loses value, the subconscious mental state evoked is somewhat like that in response to a piece of their body being removed. This is potentially very stressful; a stress source that doesn’t go away easily. What we have here is very different from the types of stress that our Paleolithic ancestors faced.

So, what will happen if you take testosterone supplementation to solve your low T problem? If your problem is due to high levels of cortisol and other stress hormones (including some yet to be discovered), induced by stress, and your low T treatment is long-term, your body will adapt in a compensatory way. It will “sense” that T is now high, together with high levels of stress.

Whatever form long-term compensatory adaptation may take in this scenario, somehow the combination of high T and high stress doesn’t conjure up a very nice image. What comes to mind is a borderline insane person, possibly with good body composition, and with a lot of self-confidence – someone like the protagonist of the film American Psycho.

Again, will the high T levels, obtained through supplementation, suppress cortisol? It doesn’t seem to work that way, at least not in the long term. In fact, stress hormones seem to affect other hormones a lot more than other hormones affect them. The reason is probably that stress responses were very important in our evolutionary past, which would make any mechanism that could override them nonadaptive.

Today, stress hormones, while necessary for a number of metabolic processes (e.g., in intense exercise), often work against us. For example, serious conflict in our modern world is often solved via extensive writing (through legal avenues). Violence is regulated and/or institutionalized – e.g., military, law enforcement, some combat sports. Without these, society would break down, and many of us would join the afterlife sooner and more violently than we would like (see Pinker’s take on this topic: ).

Sir, the solution to your low T problem may actually be found elsewhere, namely in stress reduction. But careful, you run the risk of becoming a nice guy.

Relax Frequently. Very Frequently.

by Nina

“When we’re renewing, we’re truly renewing, so when we’re working, we can really work.”—Tony Schwartz

On this blog, we’ve talked till we’re blue in the face about how important it is to reduce stress to support healthy aging. After all, chronic stress can cause everything from heart disease and stroke to depression. But when people are busy with their everyday lives, it’s often difficult for them to make lifestyle changes to support a long-term goal. But according to a recent editorial in the New York Times Relax! You’ll be More Productive, there is also a short-term payoff to relaxing on a regular basis:

“A new and growing body of multidisciplinary research shows that strategic renewal—including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations — boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health.”

Yes, author Tony Schwartz says that relaxing on a regular basis “it’s possible to get more done, in less time, more sustainably.” He goes on to say that human beings didn’t evolve to expend energy continuously but rather to pulse between spending and recovering energy. This is a reference to the fight or flight response vs. the relaxation response, which we’ve discussed in previous posts (see Chronic Stress: An Introduction and The Relaxation Response and Yoga). This is not big news to us, of course. What got me intrigued, however, was Schwartz’s statement that “strategic renewal” ideally should come every 90 minutes.

“during the day we move from a state of alertness progressively into physiological fatigue approximately every 90 minutes. Our bodies regularly tell us to take a break, but we often override these signals and instead stoke ourselves up with caffeine, sugar and our own emergency reserves — the stress hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.”

Among other studies, Schwartz cites the work of Professor K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues at Florida State University. Dr. Ericsson studied elite performers, including musicians, athletes, actors and chess players, and found that in each of these fields, the best performers typically practice in uninterrupted sessions that last no more than 90 minutes. They begin in the morning, take a break between sessions, and rarely work for more than four and a half hours in any given day.

Legs Up the Wall Pose (Better Than Sleep)

 Of course most of us can’t take a nap every 90 minutes—something Schwartz recommends—at work. Besides, unless you’re sleep deprived, sleeping probably isn’t the best way to relax and restore yourself (see Conscious Relaxation vs. Sleep). So—wait for it—how about doing a little bit of yoga every 90 minutes? Maybe shut your office door and do a restorative pose or two (see Mini Restorative Sequence). Legs Up the Wall (Viparita Karani) would be my pose of choice. And if you don’t have a door (yeah, I worked in one of those cubicle thingies back in the day) or feel like being active instead of resting, try some of our office yoga poses. We’ve got a sequence you can do in your office clothes (see Mini Office Yoga Sequence) and a series of seated poses you can do right at your desk (see Chair Yoga Mini Sequence). And, of course, you could always meditate, even in a noisy environment (see Achieving Stillness in Turbulent Situations)!

The War of the End of the World: The health puzzle posed by its survivors

The War of Canudos took place in Brazil in 1896 and 1897. Canudos was a settlement of several thousand deeply religious Christians, led by a man known as Antonio Conselheiro. They opposed the recent establishment of the Republic of Brazil, particularly the institution of income taxes and civil marriage; the former was considered government-sponsored theft and the latter a sacrilege. The republic had been declared in 1889 following a military coup that deposed Dom Pedro II, an emperor beloved by the common people and under whose rule slavery had recently been abolished.

Canudos was located in the Brazilian sertão, an inhospitable semi-arid region in the northeastern part of the country. The inhabitants of Canudos were the sertanejos. The term jagunço was used to refer to the males, especially the outlaws. Many of the sertanejos lived in semi-starvation, in poor sanitary conditions, and with very limited (if any) access to healthcare. Infant mortality was very high at the time. Those who reached adulthood were typically of small stature, and very thin; not lean, thin – often described as “skin and bones”.

Below is what a typical young jagunço would look like at the time of the War of Canudos. (Some authors differentiate between jagunços and cangaceiros based on small differences in cultural and dress traditions; e.g., the hat in the photo is typical of cangaceiros.) The jagunços tended to be the best fed among the sertanejos. They were also known as cold-blooded killers. The photo is a cropped version of the original one; the grizzly original is at the top of a recent blog post by Juan Pablo Dabove (). The blog post discusses Vargas Llosa’s historical fiction book based on the War of Canudos, the masterpiece titled “The War of the End of the World” ().

Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian-Spanish writer and politician, was the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature; “The War of the End of the World” is considered one of his greatest literary achievements. Euclides da Cunha wrote the most famous non-fictional account on the War of Canudos, another masterpiece that has been called “Brazil’s greatest book”, titled “Rebellion in the Backlands” (). The Portughese title is “Os Sertões”. Vargas Llosa’s book is based on da Cunha’s.

Sergio Rezende’s movie, “Guerra de Canudos” (), is a superb dramatization of the War of Canudos. I watched this movie after reading Vargas Llosa’s and da Cunha’s books, and was struck by two things: (a) the outstanding performances, especially by José Wilker, Cláudia Abreu, Marieta Severo, and Paulo Betti; and (b) the striking resemblance of the latter (Betti) to Royce Gracie (), a very nice man whom I interviewed () for my book on compensatory adaptation (), and who is no stranger to Ultimate Fighting Championship and mixed martial arts fans ().

In a nutshell, the War of Canudos went more or less like this. There were four military campaigns against the settlement. The third was a major one, led by one of Brazil’s most accomplished military leaders at the time, Colonel Antônio Moreira César. The jagunços, resorting to guerrilla warfare, fought off the government troops in the first three. The fourth, led by General Arthur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães, saw the jagunços defeated in a war of attrition primarily due to lack of access to food and water, after heavy losses among government troops. At the end, nearly all of the surviving jagunços were executed, by knife – to their absolute horror, and the perverse pleasure of the executioners bent on revenge, as the victims believed that they would not go to heaven if their lives were ended by knife, even against their will.

Ned, what is your point regarding health!?

After going through numerous sources, paper-based and online, academic and non-academic, I am convinced that a significant number of the survivors of the Canudos War lived to their 90s and beyond. This conclusion is based chiefly on comparisons of various dates, especially of interviews with survivors. No single source dedicated to this particular health-related aspect of the War of Canudos seems to exist. There is a video clip that shows some of the survivors (), speaking in Portuguese, with their ages shown in subtitles (“years”, in Portuguese, is “anos”). One of them, a man, is listed as being a supercentenarian.

In modern USA those who live to the age of 90 and beyond are outliers. Less than 2 percent of the population reach the age of 90 (). Most of them are women. My impression is that among the survivors of the War of Canudos, the 90+ percentage was at least 5 times higher; even with access to sanitation and healthcare in modern USA being much better at any age.

If my impression is correct, how can it be explained?

I think that some of the readers of this blog will be tempted to explain the high longevity based on calorie restriction. But the empirical evidence suggests that poor nutrition, in terms of micronutrients and macronutrients, is associated with increased mortality, not the other way around (, , ). Mortality due to poor nutrition is frequently from infectious diseases, in the young and the old. Degenerative diseases are widespread among the overnourished, not the well nourished, and kill mostly at later ages. It is not uncommon for infectious diseases to “mask” as degenerative diseases – e.g., viral diabetes ().

Often people point at hunter-gatherer populations and argue that they are healthy because of their low calorie intake. But mortality from infectious diseases among hunter-gatherers is very high, particularly in children. Others point to the absence of industrial foods engineered for overconsumption, which I think is definitely a factor in terms of degenerative diseases. Some say that a main factor is retention of lean body mass as one ages, referring mostly to muscle tissue, a hypothesis to which the case of the sertanejos poses a problem – what lean body mass!? And, on top of all of their problems, the sertanejos regularly faced long droughts, which may be why they typically had a “dry” look.

Yet others point to low stress. It is reasonable to think that stress is a mediating factor in the development of many modern diseases. Still, the sertanejos living in Canudos have had to endure quite a lot of stress, before and after the War of Canudos. In fact, the depictions of their lives at around the time of the War of Canudos suggest very stressful, miserable lives, prior to the conflict; which in part explains the early success of a religious settlement where life was marginally better.

By the way, the traditional Okinawans have also endured plenty of stress (), and they have had the highest longevity rates in recorded history. Food scarcity has frequently been combined with stress in their case, as with many other long-living groups. Causality is complex here, probably changing direction in different subsets of the data, but I have long suspected that the combination of stress and overnourishment is a particular unnatural one, to which humans are badly maladapted.

A main factor is almost always forgotten: the effective immune systems of those who have been subjected to starvation, poor sanitation, lack of healthcare, and other challenges – especially in childhood – and survived to adulthood. And here some counterintuitive things can happen. For example, someone may be very sickly early in life and barely survive childhood, and then become very resistant to infectious diseases later, thus appearing to be very healthy, to the surprise of relatives and friends who remember “that sickly child”. Immunocompetence is something that the body builds up in response to exposure.

As they say in northeastern Brazil, in characteristic drawl: “Ol’ sihtaneju ain’t die easy”.

Yoga, Stress and Weight Management

by Nina

Are you planning to relax over the holidays? Because if you’re not and you are worried about gaining weight, perhaps you should set aside some time for yoga.

You see, I’m helping Baxter with research for his upcoming workshop on Yoga for Healthy Eating at the San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference in January and I’ve learned exactly how stress can induce weight gain. Of course, we all know about so-called “stress eating,” but I wanted to know why that happens (I’m like that, you know, always wanting to the whys and hows as well as the whats). And I found that it’s due to the combination of hormones that are released in our bodies when we’re under stress.

These hormones include  adrenalin, which gives us instant energy, along with corticotrophin releasing hormone (CRH) and cortisol. While high levels of adrenalin and CRH decrease your appetite at first—we usually don’t have much of an appetite during a crisis—the effects usually don’t last very long. That’s when the cortisol—whose job is to help you to replenish your body after the stress has passed—kicks in, increasing your appetite and driving you to eat more. And because most of us no longer expend extra calories while in the acute phase of stress (we’re no longer actually fighting or running when our “fight or flight” responses are triggered), we don’t really need to replenish our food stores. So the increased appetite results in, you guessed it, unwanted weight gain.

Chocolate-Almond Candy Heart Made and Photographed by Brad Gibson

In addition, while we’re under stress, we typically have an impulse to do something, to move. So unless you respond to your impulse to move with actual physical activity—yoga asana, anyone?—eating often becomes the activity that relieves the stress.

This is why both relaxation and exercise are recommended for reducing your appetite. When you use yoga or meditation to trigger the relaxation response (see Stress, Your Health, and Yoga), your parasympathetic nervous system reduces the levels stress hormones in your body. Exercise is also excellent for stress reduction as it, too, triggers the release of biochemicals that counter the negative effects of stress hormones. In addition, exercising will satisfy your impulse to move and hopefully prevent you from turning to food as a way to relieve your stress.

My prescription for preventing weight gain during the holidays? An active yoga practice followed by conscious relaxation (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga). And if you’re short on time, try even 10 or 15 minutes of conscious relaxation.

Yoga is a great thing but...

by Nina 

Stop Sign by Brad Gibson

“Yoga is a great thing but it is not everything or the only thing.”

That’s the sentence that popped into my mind while I was practicing yoga yesterday afternoon (a very enjoyable backbend practice, by the way). In the back of my mind, I was obviously mulling over a post I read on the It’s All Yoga Baby blog (see when the yoga doesn’t work: depression, failure & the purpose of practice), in which Roseanne talked about her depression and her feeling that she is “failing” at her yoga practice.

“Underneath it all, however, is a vague sense that I’m failing at my practice, that I’m as broken and fucked up as I was before I committed to yoga (chronic and clinical depression was what drove me to practice in the first place), that the practice isn’t working. There’s also the vague sense that I’m not allowed to be feeling this way – there are many stories of miraculous healing from depression (and everything else) through yoga, but nobody talks about the relapses. I feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

I’ve already mentioned in a couple of previous posts (see Practice As Many As You Can and Authentic Yoga) how reading Yoga Body by Mark Singleton brought home to me once again that most of what we consider to be “yoga” these days was developed in the 20th century. This means that, contrary to what some teachers claim, the yoga we know and practice these days is not some thousands-of-years-old practice that is the answer to everything, including depression and anxiety, as well as physical injuries and illnesses (though it can definitely help with those things for certain people). And I think those in the yoga community who promote it as such, do us all a disservice. Because the result for people like Roseanne is that when yoga doesn’t provide the answer for them, they feel as if they are at fault, that they are doing something wrong, or that they have “failed” in some way. And the truth is, yoga was probably only used to treat depression and anxiety starting in the 20th century.

When I teach yoga for emotional well-being (including depression, anxiety, stress, etc.), I always add that I while I consider yoga to be a powerful tool for improving mental health, it may not be the only answer for you. In fact, you may need to use it as a supplement to western medicine, including drugs and/or therapy. And I recommend that if you are in a crisis, you should consult with your family doctor or a mental health professional. You need to do whatever it takes to help you get better. And, please, no guilt or shame about this!

The truth is, many years ago, before I became serious about yoga but while I was taking regular classes, I had two nervous breakdowns (the diagnosis was agitated depression), within a five-year period. And I’m convinced that, especially during the second breakdown, that my family doctor and the drugs she prescribed for me prevented me from being hospitalized. Later on, life style changes, including a regular home yoga practice, helped me reduce the stress in my life that seemed to be the main trigger for my illness. And I’ve been well since then. But just as important, I believe that yoga has also helped me come to a state of self acceptance regarding my condition. And this included both overcoming my feeling of shame about taking medication for depression (my therapist encouraged me to stay on a low maintenance dose) and starting to talk—and write—about my experiences as a way of possibly helping others.

I want to be very clear that I’m not here giving any medical advice here. This post is not intended to tell anyone what the best way is to heal from depression. I just felt that it was very important to state that as wonderful as I feel yoga is, I believe it has its limits. And there's no shame in that. Really, all I’m trying to say here is summed up by the sentence that I opened this post with:

“Yoga is a great thing but it is not everything or the only thing.”

Does Home Yoga Practice Make You Healthier?

by Baxter

Over the years, as I have worked with individuals on a variety of health issues using yoga as a therapeutic tool, I have observed that those who do a regular home practice (usually two to four times a week) have more dramatic and sustained improvement in their health. There are always other factors that come into play, but in general, if they do their work regularly, they feel better and function better over time. This has been especially true for the students who have chronic pain conditions. But can what I have observed informally be applied more broadly to our general population of yoga practitioners? And what if you are generally healthy? Does yoga give you an advantage over other things? Well, a new study seems to say yes to that and a few other propositions about yoga’s benefits.

In a recent study entitled “Frequency of Yoga Practice Predicts Health: Results of a National Survey of Yoga Practitioners,”the authors out of the University of Maryland School of Nursing and the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center  looked at the positive health benefits of yoga, not simply the therapeutic benefits of yoga for those with illness and injury. Their stated purpose was to examine the relationship between yoga practice and health by evaluating such things as subjective well-being, diet, BMI, smoking, alcohol/caffeine consumption, sleep, fatigue, social support, mindfulness, and physical activity. They chose the tool of a survey, administered to practitioners of a specific style of yoga with a strict standardization of teaching that would likely contribute to consistent instruction, Iyengar Yoga, which could lead to a more valid set of results.  Out of a pool of over 18,000 potential students at fifteen Iyengar schools in the US, they sent out a cross-sectional, anonymous internet survey to 4307 randomly selected students. They received back 1045 (24.3%) surveys completed and ready for analysis.

Backyard Wild Flowers by Brad Gibson

When they evaluated their data, they found that home practice had the greatest predictive positive effect on health. Frequency of home practice favorably predicted the following: mindfulness, subjective well-being, BMI, fruit and vegetable consumption, vegetarian status, sleep, and fatigue. They also found that the different components of yoga practice also had some influence: “Each component of yoga practice (different categories of physical poses, breath work, meditation, philosophy study) predicted at least 1 health outcome.”

Finally, they concluded, “Home practice of yoga predicted health better than years of practice or class frequency. Different physical poses and yoga techniques may have unique health benefits.” This so wonderfully echoed something I probably say once a week in class: “I love that you come to yoga class once a week with me, but if you want to get the real benefits of yoga, you need to practice on your own a few times a week.” And, of course, Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra says the same thing when he states that you will achieve your goals when you practice regularly over a long period of time!

To recap what the authors were looking at, I quote their study once again:

“The objective of this study is to better understand the interrelationship between yoga practice and health. Specifically, the study addressed the contributions of yoga practice in general (years of practice, classes per month, and/or days per month of home practice) and practice of specific components of yoga practice (physical poses, breath work, meditation, and/or philosophy study) to these aspects of health. It is important to study the unique contributions of the individual components of yoga practice because some aspects of yoga practice may be more effective than others in improving specific health outcomes such as body weight, sleep, and mental health.”

I couldn’t agree more! As I work with individuals, I am always considering which component practices would best serve the unique circumstances an individual is working with in designing a home practice for them. 

When reading the fine print, a few notable specific observations popped out at me, specifically related to the study of yoga philosophy. Notably, frequency of philosophy study was the yoga practice variable that most often predicted health.  In addition, more frequent philosophy study also contributed to a lower BMI and higher odds of being a vegetarian.  And this sometimes equated to only reading philosophy once a week. 

When they looked at categories of poses, “vigorous poses remained an independent predictor of BMI and sleep quality, for every additional day per week of vigorous pose practice, BMI decreased .21 of a point, and sleep disturbance improved .26 of a point.”  And doing gentle poses more often correlated to a greater chance of eating vegetarian diet and drinking less alcohol. In regards to fatigue, it seemed that for older practitioners, even a small amount of yoga had a positive effect on fatigue levels and sleep disturbances.

And since so many of us are concerned about eating in a healthy way as we age, “more frequent practice of gentle poses, including supine restorative poses and relaxation pose (Savasana), were associated with three aspects of health that deal with feeding behaviors or cravings: higher fruit and vegetable consumption, higher rates of vegetarianism, and lower alcohol consumption.”

When the question of how does yoga achieve these impressive results, the authors mention a theory on how yoga decreases stress: “It has been postulated that yoga impacts the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis and the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) response to stress, possibly via direct vagal stimulation.” In other words, yoga may have some impact on the endocrine and autonomic nervous systems that results in lowered stress reactions in the body. We have alluded to this mechanism of action in past blog posts, and although this study does not look at the biochemistry of those surveyed, this theory still seems plausible as an underlying explanation for yoga’s benefits.

I need to go back to the philosophy findings. The authors go on to note that all those who had regular philosophy study were also practicing a lot of yoga in general. They concluded,” Thus, any relationship between philosophy study and health may reflect the relationship of frequency and intensity of yoga practice to health. This provides more evidence that an intense practice involving all aspects of yoga practice may be more beneficial to health than a less intense practice that includes only one or two aspects of yoga practice, such as just practicing the physical poses or breath work.” Darn!  I can’t just sit around and read about yoga and expect good health! But we all kind of know that already from our personal experience, don’t we?

So, does yoga lead to good health?  Well, this study does not actually prove this. It infers that may be the case, but it does not conclude that yoga causes good health.  It may seem like semantics, but it simply means more work needs to be done to show causality between practicing yoga and good health.

Like all studies, there were some blind spots. Some of the limitations of the study included: studying only to Iyengar yoga practitioners in the USA; anonymous online surveys have the potential for lots of inaccurate data; the response rate of 27% was low; most of the subjects were predominantly white, female, and highly educated, so diversity was not represented; and this kind of study allows one to draw inferences, but do not allow one to conclude that yoga actually impacts health.

Despite these limitations, yoga still looks like a good bet to help improve your overall health. It seems you don’t necessarily need to practice for years to get benefits, but the more you incorporate it into your daily life, the more likely you are to see the predicted positives come true for you.

Restorative Yoga: An Introduction

by Nina

Last fall I did a series of posts on yoga and stress. Working from my first major post on the topic (see Relaxation Response and Yoga), which listed the various types of poses and practices that are helpful for stress, I added posts that expanded on each of the items I listed, except one: restorative yoga. My reason for skipping over the topic of restorative yoga was simple: I didn’t have any good photographs of restorative yoga poses that I could use with my post! But last week for Baxter’s post on digestion (see Mini Restorative Practice for Digestion), I finally had a chance to take a few photos of three of the classic, most frequently practiced restorative poses. And I woke up this morning realizing that it was finally time to address this topic.

Restorative yoga is a form of yoga that was specially designed to provide deep rest and relaxation. In restorative yoga, you use props to support yourself in the shape of a classic yoga pose, including forward bends, backbends, side stretches, twists, and inversions. For example, in Child’s Pose, rather than folding forward all the way on to the floor, you use a bolster or stack of folded blankets to support your entire front body.

The props you use in restorative yoga not only make the pose more comfortable but they take the effort out of the pose. Rather than using your muscles to hold you in the shape of a pose as you would normally, the props hold you in the pose so you can simply let your muscles relax. With your muscles completely relaxed, you can then turn your attention inward, focusing on your breath, physical sensations, or any other object of meditation, which allows the relaxation response to switch on.

Restorative yoga is perfect for those days when you depleted, sick, stressed out, low on energy or are just in the mood for a soothing practice. For people who can’t practice inversions for stress reduction, restorative yoga poses are an excellent alternative. For example, Reclined Cobbler’s pose with props is the perfect choice for a 10 to 20 minute stress reduction practice.

Are you looking at this photograph and wondering why you would want to go through all the trouble of getting all those props together when you can just lie down in Savasana (Corpse pose)? Well, I’m writing today to answer that very question.

First of all, like active yoga poses, the type of restorative pose you do can have a strong effect on your moods and emotions. And because you typically stay in a restorative yoga pose for longer periods of time, the emotional effect can be even stronger. For example, the forward bend of Child’s pose is normally quieting (as a forward bends for people who can practice them comfortably), and the restorative version is even more quieting. Active backbends can be simulating and uplifting, and while the restorative versions are not stimulating (all the effort is taken out of them), a restorative backbend can also be uplifting, providing an anti-depressant effect. (See Yoga and Your Emotions for information on the emotional effects of poses.)

And, secondly, in Savasana your body is in an anatomically neutral position, so no muscles are being released or stretched. In a restorative pose, however, you still receive many of the benefits of the pose itself. For example, in a restorative backbend, you are opening your chest and stretching many of the muscles that become tight after driving long distances or sitting hunched forward at a desk all day. Passively stretching your muscles as your relax increases your feeling of relaxation, as some of the stress you have been holding in your body is gently released. And because you are completely comfortable and relaxed, you can stay in the pose for much longer amounts of time. So restorative poses are actually a good way to work on flexibility, as well as relaxation.

But the best way for you to understand the benefits of restorative yoga is to experience them. So if you’ve never tried restorative yoga, experiment by trying either one of the poses I’ve shown today (or any other you’ve seen before). As always, you can just do a single pose or you can do short or full-length sequence (see Mini Restorative Practice for a short sequence). If you’re feeling hyper from stress or anxiety, you may find it difficult to lie down in a restorative pose. In this case, I recommend doing either an active yoga practice or some other form of exercise first before the restorative pose.

Yoga Sutra 1.2: Restricting the Whirls of Consciousness

by Nina

My young cousin asked me last night about the history of the form of yoga that she’s been practicing lately. I told her that it was a very recent form of hatha yoga, but added that all the hatha yoga we’ve been doing in the United States was developed in the 20th century. We then talked about the part of yoga that was, indeed, very ancient, and I tossed out some of the definitions of yoga from the classic scriptures. One of them was this from The Yoga Sutras:

Yoga cittavritti nirodha

Yoga is the restriction of the whirls of consciousness.

I like this particular translation of sutra 1.2 because it translates the compound word “cittavritti” as “whirls of consciousness.” I not only find that very poetic, but also very accurate in terms of how the mind works. The word “vritti” has many definitions, including "waves" and "fluctuations," but whirls reminds me of the revolved yoga poses that also contain the word “vritti,” such as Paravritti Trikonasana and Paravritti Parsvakonasana. So for me, whirls evokes revolving, turning, and circling. And when we’re depressed or anxious or mentally stressed out, aren’t we tormented by the our whirls of consciousness, by negative thoughts and emotions that cycle over and over? What if I miss my deadline? What if the plane crashes? What if I can’t fall asleep tonight? Or, if only my lover hadn’t left me. If only I wasn’t so helpless/afraid/overwhelmed. If only my parents had loved me more.

In Andrew Solomon’s wonderful book on depression The Noonday Demon, he describes the difference between clinical depression and agitated (or anxiety based) depression, saying that clinical depression is an obsession with the past or, as I like to put it, all those “if only” thoughts. On the other hand, he says that agitated depression (or anxiety for that matter) is an obsession with the future, or as I put it, all those “what if” thoughts. Do either of those states of mind sound familiar? And if so, don’t you think it would wonderful to be able to “restrict” or “cease” or “quiet” those whirls of consciousness?

Spring Blossoms, Clouds by Nina Zolotow

Yoga was initially developed (or perhaps “evolved” is a better word) for that purpose. Thousands of years of different kinds of yoga practice have resulted in a lot of different methods for “restricting the whirls of consciousness” or quieting the mind, including meditation, breath practices, and chanting, as well as asana practice.

And, for me, this concept is the basis for using yoga for your emotional wellbeing. When I teach workshops on this topic, I always talk about this translation of sutra 1.2. Because my general principle for using yoga for emotional wellbeing is simply this: Start by becoming aware of the vrittis, of the way your mind gets caught up in them. And then observe how different yoga practices affect them.

Stressed Mind, Stressed Cells?

by Brad

Last Friday I attended a talk by Dr. Elissa Epel called “Telomeres, telomerase and mental states: Stressed mind, stressed cells?” According to the abstract Dr. Epel supplied in advance of her seminar:

"I will discuss our UCSF research on the telomere/telomerase maintenance system and relationships to stress and other psychological states and lifestyle factors. The length of our telomeres is a predictor of health status – early disease and mortality, and may serve as an index of biological aging. We now know from 8 years of research that shorter telomere length is related to states of suffering—anxiety, depression, trauma exposure, and chronic stress. Just how much can people stabilize their telomere length through interventions such as exercise and meditation? I will discuss initial findings, suggesting that this marker appears somewhat malleable."

Dr. Epel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF.  She is also a co-founder of Telome Health, Inc., a relatively new company located in the Bay Area to promote the use of telomere testing as a measure of biological age and overall health status. The basic idea that Dr. Epel was promoting is that chronic stress has a negative impact on telomere length, and that stress reduction through diet, exercise, and possibly other lifestyle changes can have preserve telomere length.

You may remember I posted a piece on this subject a couple months ago that discussed telomeres, yoga and aging ("Science, Aging and Yoga"). As a recap, telomeres are sequence of nucleotides or base pairs at the ends of your DNA that serve cap off and protect DNA integrity. One of the theories of aging asserts that decreased telomere length resulting from the failure of certain cell type in the body (immune cells, stem cells, etc.) to properly renew their telomere length after rounds of cell division via the action of telomerases (enzymes that add back lost telomere DNA) can lead to cellular senescence (a terminal, not dividing state) that could play a role in aging, acting as a sort of molecular clock. The question as to whether a reduction or low telomere length is responsible human aging or diseases is still hotly debate (see NY Times article here), despite many studies showing a correlation of shortened telomeres with cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s and other chronic diseases of aging.

Ferns by Joan Webster

Personally, I found much of the data presented by Dr. Epel not especially convincing, as it was mostly correlative, and did not provide much if any mechanistic insight. However, I was intrigued by her attempt to link the physical and mental state of “stress” that we experience daily (you know, “I’m so stressed out”) to cellular stress and damage (alteration in the physiological state of cells or tissues that can lead to damage at the molecular and cellular level). Although we are all familiar with the former use of the term “stress,” this second usage of the term “stress” is quite different, and its effects can remain hidden until it manifests into a pathological or disease state.

It is well known that emotional stress can lead to an increase in cortisol and insulin levels, as well as increases in catecholamines and inflammatory cytokines. What is less clear is how these signals are integrated at the cellular and tissue level, especially under chronic stress, some of which are not at all obvious. Most studies measuring telomere length are on carried out on immune cells present in blood, as these cells are relatively easy to collect and originate from actively dividing cells. 

The notion that chronic stress could alter telomerase activity in these proliferating immune cell types, resulting in the shortening of the telomeres and causing these cells to lose their capacity to divide (“Immunosenescence”) is certainly an interesting hypothesis. Indeed, immunosenescence is increasingly being seen as a new target for drugs and/or biologics therapy by both pharmaceutical and biotech companies. According to data presented by Dr. Epel, one group of people that apparently has a statistically significant decrease in telomere length are long-term primary caregivers, a group that is regarded as suffering from chronic stress. People with long-term depression apparently also have a similar phenotype.

And as I have discussed in an earlier post, meditation and mindfulness practices have been proposed as ways to ward off the presumed negative effects of telomere shortening. (I say presumed, because it’s still not clear to what extent shortened telomeres are by definition a bad thing, or how much shortening of telomeres is required for any negative consequences.) The science on all this is still in the very early days. It may turn out that telomere length will be one more false lead in the ongoing search for biochemical measures of biological aging. And I would be extremely wary of any company advertising to measure your telomere length or that suggests that taking supplements to increase telomere length makes any sense at all. Unfortunately, there are a growing number of companies out there they do indeed make such claims. (To their credit, Telome Health appears to be considerably more circumspect in their claims and services than most.)

I suppose what interested me the most from Dr. Epel’s seminar is that it once again reminded me of the many avenues of medical research that are converging on the notion that chronic stress is a negative factor in human health and possibly a driver in premature or accelerated aging. While the details of how this actually happens is unclear, it is interesting to consider that one of the main, if not primary, benefits of practicing yoga might be to reduce stress.  Who knows, maybe it will turn out that yoga reduces stress at both the psychological and cellular level? Too early to tell, but stay tuned….